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ORIGIN, STRUGGLES AND PRINCIPLES OP 
THE U. S. SANITARY COMMISSION. 



\Extracted from the January (1864) Number of the North American 
Review.] 


We propose in the following article to describe from intimate 
personal knowledge, and from original documentary sources, the 
origin, struggles and principles of the United States Sanitary 
Commission. 

Fort Sumter fell on the 15th of April, 1861. The President’s 
proclamation calling out seventy-five thousand troops'for the sup¬ 
pression of an armed rebellion appeared on the same day The 
whole country was aroused, and while the men rushed to arms, 
the women sprang with equal earnestness to the task of pre¬ 
paring against the time of wounds and sickness in the gathering 
army. Churches and schools, parlors and bed-chambers, were 
alive with the patriotic industry of those whose fingers could not 
rest while a stitch could be set or a bandage torn for the relief 
of those who might soon encounter the enemy in the field. The 
noblest surgeons and physicians were lecturing in basements 
and vestries on the best methods of making lint and bandages, 
and cutting hospital garments. Little circles and associations, 
with patriotic intent, were springing up everywhere, and all of 
them were in need of information and guidance. 

At a meeting of fifty or sixty ladies very informally called at 
the New York Infirmary for Women, April 25th, 1861, the 
providential suggestion of attempting to organize the whole 
benevolence of the women of the country into a Central Associa¬ 
tion was ripened into a plan, and a committee was appointed to 
carry it into immediate effect. 


ET 4-m 
,ZsQ<o°\ 


This committee drew up an Address a to the Vfomen of New 
York, and especially to those already engaged in preparing 
against the time of wounds and sickness in the army,” which 
was published in all the principal newspapers of the city of New 
York, calling a public meeting in the Cooper Institute on the 
morning of April 29th, 1861. 

The Address stated the object of the meeting to be the con¬ 
centration and systemizing of the spontaneous and earnest 
efforts of the women of the land for the supply of extra medical 
aid to our army. It urged that “ numerous societies, working 
“ without concert, organization, or head ; without any direct 
“ understanding with the official authorities ; without any posi- 
“ tive instructions as to the immediate or future wants of the 
u army,—were liable to waste their enthusiasm in disproportion- 
“ ate efforts ; to overlook some claims and overdo others ; while 
“ they gave unnecessary trouble in official quarters by the va- 
“ riety and irregularity of their proffers of help, or their in- 
“ quiries for guidance.” 

It was urged, that the form which woman’s benevolence had 
taken and would continue to take, “ was, first, the contribution 
“ of labor, skill, and money in the preparation of lint, band- 
“ ages, and other stores, in aid of the wants of the Medical Staff; 
“ second, the offer of personal service as nursesand that in 
regard to both these points, exact official information as to what 
was wanted in the way of stores, and what would be accepted 
in the w r ay of nurses, was essential to economy of effort and 
feeling ; and that this information ought to be obtained by a 
Central Association, and diffused through the country. “ To 
“ consider this matter deliberately, and to take such common 
“action as may then appear wise, we earnestly invite the 
“ women of New York, and the pastors of the churches, wdth 
“such medical advisers as may be specially invited, to assem- 
“ ble for counsel and action at the Cooper Institute, on Monday 
“ morning next, at 11 o’clock.” So concludes the Address, 
which is signed by ninety-one of the best known and most re¬ 
spected ladies of New l r ork. 

The meeting was accordingly held, and presented probably 
the largest council of women ever assembled in this country. 
It was presided over by D. D. Field, Esq. Dr. Bellows ex- 


3 


plained the objebts of the meeting, and was followed in an elo¬ 
quent speech by Yice-President Hamlin, then understood to be 
, awaiting in Hew York the possible necessity of transferring the 
seat of the Government to that city, should Washington, with 
the President and Cabinet, be cut off by the threatening inter¬ 
position of rebel forces. Dr. Crawford, since Brigadier-General 
Crawford, who had been at Port Sumter, followed him. Dr. 
Wood, of the Bellevue Hospital, offered the services of his as¬ 
sociates on the training of nurses. Dr. Valentine Mott and Dr. 
A. II. Stevens, veteran leaders in the medical profession, both 
urged the merits of the enterprise. The late Rev. Dr. Bethune 
eloqently spoke some of the last words he was permitted pub¬ 
licly to utter, at this meeting. Dr. Satterlee, U. S. A., whose 
namS is the synonyme for integrity, and who has expended mil¬ 
lions in the national Purveying Department, without ever 
being suspected of turning, directly or indirectly, a penny to his 
own account, expressed his earnest good-will to the undertak¬ 
ing. Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, Dr. Church, and others, also raised 
their voices in the promotion of the effort. 

A Committee on Organization was appointed by the chair, 
who brought in “ Articles of Organization,” which had already 
been very carefully prepared, and which, under the name of 
the “ Woman’s Central Association of Relief,” united the 
women of Hew York in a society, whose objects were thus 
stated : 

ct Art. III. The objects of this Association shall be to collect 
“ and distribute information, obtained from official sources, con- 
“ cerning the actual and probable wants of the army; to 
“ establish a recognized union with the Medical Staff of the 
u Federal and State troops, and to act as auxiliary to their 
iC efforts; to unite with the Hew York Medical Association, for 
“ the supply of lint, bandages, &c., in sustaining a central 
“ depot of stores ; to solicit and accept the aid of all local asso- 
“ ciations, here or elsewhere, choosing to act through this 
society, and especially to open a bureau for the examination 
“ and registration of candidates for medical instruction as 
“ nurses, and to take measures for securing a supply of well- 
“ trained nurses against any possible demand of the war.” 


4 


The venerable and distinguished Dr. Valentine Mott was 
appointed President of the Association ; Dr. Bellows, Vice-Pres¬ 
ident; G. F. Allen, Esq., Secretary ; and Howard Potter, of 
Brown, Brothers & Co., Treasurer. 

The Association went into immediate operation, and invited 
local societies to look to it for guidance. It asked for supplies, 
collected money, and diligently registered and trained nurses. 

The first business, however, of the Executive Committee was 
to collect reliable information from the ranking Medical 
Officer of the United States Army then in Hew York, in regard 
to the necessities of the troops. The Chairman of this Com¬ 
mittee accordingly sought the Medical Purveyor, armed with 
the following written questions, which are here given from the 
original draft. They show that at the earliest period <*f this 
movement principles were kept in view which have never since 
been lost sight of, and which have only grown in importance 
and sway in the mind of the Commission : 

Questions put to the Chief Medical Purveyor of the 
United States Army. 

1st Class of Questions. 

1. What are the precise functions of the Medical Staff of the 
army, in time of war; and how can medical and volunteer aid 
be best offered in its service, without interfering with proper 
discipline and routine ? 

2. What are the stores and supplies which the Government, 
orders and allows the sick or wounded; and is there any 
deficiency in this army supply which it is desirable to eke 
out by volunteer aid] 

3. What are the most urgent wants of the army in the way of 
medical stores, which are not within the reach of the Medical 
Staff? 

4. Please furnish a complete list of all wants which the sick 
and wounded are likely to experience, which are not supplied 
by the Army Staff? 


5 


5. Is it desirable or feasible to have any official understand¬ 
ing with the Medical Bureau at AYashington, with General 
Scott, the Secretary of War, and the President, in regard to the 
relations of the Military and Medical Staffs and the volunteer 
associations ? 


2 d Class of Questions . 

(Designed to get at the amount of aid which will be required, 
and the nature of it.) 

1. How many men are likely to be in the field during this 
war ? Are not 200,000 certain to be in the field for six months 
or a year; and 100,000 for three years ? 

2. What is the recognized percentage of illness in all armies, 
independent of climate and position 'i How does military life 
differ from civil life, or armies from other assemblages of 
people in respect of exposure to sickness ? Is there a marked 
difference between regulars and volunteers in respect of 
sickness ? 

3. How are armies affected by change of climate and local 
situation; and what is likely to be the extent and effect of the 
change to which our army will be subjected? 

4. What are the specific diseases to which our army will be 
exposed ? 

5. What is the usual proportion in armies, of sickness to 
casualties, wounds, &c., and all other kinds of injury ? 

6. What was the experience of the Mexican war ? How 
many men were engaged in it ? What portion died ? What 
portion were killed ? What proportion were ill? How many 
Northern troops were in the war ? How did they stand the 
climate 1 What was the case in the Florida war, in all these 
respects ? 




6 


7. Have recent wars, at home or abroad, changed the views 
of army surgeons in regard to military hygiene? 

8. Is not the sickness against which we ought to prepare 
mainly independent of the question of positive battles ? Can 
the probable amount of it not be calculated, its nature antici¬ 
pated, and means for its alleviation and cure be at once pro¬ 
vided ? Is not an army of observation liable to more sickness 
than one in active service ? 

9. Should not means of prevention be resorted to ; and 
should not these means besought in an inquiry, what part of the 
anticipated illness is due to necessary, and what part to acci¬ 
dental, causes; what part may be obviated, and what can only 
be remedied ? 

10. Are not all such considerations reducible to these? 

a. The physical quality of the men sent; 

1). The nature of their food and cooking ; 

c. The quality of their clothing, outfit, and camp habits. 

Their climate; their necessary exposure; their liability to 
malarious, contagious, or camp diseases, cannot be changed. 
But cannot the percentage of illness and loss be reduced to its 
minimum, as well as the general efficiency of the army be raised 
to its maximum— 

1st. By more rigid medical examination of recruits, and all 
men sent into new regiments? Is not the laxity great at 
present ? Next, by sending back all those who have already 
gone, who, on a re-examination at Washington, are seen to be 
physically incompetent to the trial before them, supplying their 
places by fresh men, carefully selected ? 

2d. Is not the cooking of the regular and volunteer corps 
capable of a vast practical improvement? 

a. What are the present usual regulations or customs in this 
mattter? How is food prepared? and by whom? 

Might not cooks of adequate skill, previously tested, or even 
carefully prepared here, be sent, one with each company, by 


7 


orders from Headquarters? And would not this diminish, by 
several per cent., the sickness of the men ? 

5. Are the surgeons and officers sufficiently attentive to pre¬ 
cautionary hygiene ? Do they inspect the food, the dress, the 
sleeping arrangements, the marching preparations,—in respect 
of shoes, head-covering, and other matters ? And might not 
new orders in this direction from the Secretary of War have a 
great efficacy ? 

Is there a sufficient and competent medical force usually sent 
with the regiments ? and how are medical volunteers likely to 
understand military hygiene ? 

Finally, would not proper cooks sent with the army, bo better 
than nurses sent after it; and an adequate attention given to 
inspection of recruits, and hygiene, be even more efficient and 
useful than any amount of remedy ? 

11. Will any quantity of excellent advice to recruits and vol¬ 
unteers, or any amount of receipt books and cooking apparatus, 
be of practical use, unless made compulsory by actual enforce¬ 
ment from Headquarters, or the Secretary of War ? And how 
can their attention be best secured ? 

To these numerous questions, the Medical Purveyor returned 
the kindest and most patient verbal answers. It was, however, 
perfectly obvious that while, as a warm patriot and a gallant 
man, he rejoiced in the enthusiastic uprising of the women of 
the land—as a member of the Medical Staff, and a Medical Pur¬ 
veyor of the United States Army, he regarded their solicitude 
as very much exaggerated, and their proffer of aid as mostly 
superfluous. He assured their Committee that the Government 
was ready and willing to supply every thing the soldiers needed, 
or could need ; that the Medical Department was fully aroused 
to its duties and perfectly competent to them, and that it would 
be an uncalled-for confession of delinquency and poverty to 
admit that the army needed, or would need, any thing that the 
Government and the Medical Department were not able and 
willing to furnish. Hot, however, completely to backen the 
milk of human kindness in the women’s breasts, it was thought 


8 


expedient to indulge them with the opportunity of supplying a 
very short list of articles,* until the public anxiety had calmed 
down by discovering the admirable and thorough organiza¬ 
tion and efficiency of the Medical Department. Our informant 
remembers, as if it were yesterday, the glow of national pride 
with which he heard the honest old soldier unfold the re¬ 
sources of the Government, the zeal and humanity of the Med¬ 
ical Department, the admirable adequacy of its efforts in the 
Mexican war, and the settled convictions with which he left 
the presence of this experienced medical officer, that the haste 
of the humane had outrun their knowledge and their judgment, 
and that it was his own duty at once to allay wasteful activity 
by publishing fully the results of his satisfactory conference 
with the representative of the Medical Bureau in New York! 
There is not the least reason to question that the Medical Pur¬ 
veyor’s judgment was as sound, as the wholly untried future on 
which our country was then entering allowed any man’s to be; 
that he exhibited only a true esprit de corps in the ground he 
took, which was as honest as it was faithful. It is recorded 
here, only because it was the first instance of a feeling with 
which afterwards the Sanitary Commission had continually to 
strive—an honest and proper feeling in the Medical Depart¬ 
ment, which, however, just as honest and just as proper a feeling 
in the public has been obliged to withstand, qualify, and cor¬ 
rect. 

Notwithstanding the cold water thus dashed in the face of the 
Woman’s Central Association, in the first warmth of its being, 
and the distrust awakened in the minds of its very founders as 
to the necessity of its existence, matters had gone too far to 
be immediately dropped. The Vlth article of the Constitution 
had made it incumbent on the Executive Committee “ to es¬ 
tablish direct relations with the Central authorities of the 
Medical Staffand, accordingly, after inviting the Board of 

* “ Dressing-gowns. 

Night-shirts. 

Flannel under-clothing in general. 

Drawers (made loose.) 

Socks. 

Slippers. 

Flannel bandages for the abdomen, one yard loDg, eight inches wide.” 



0 


Physicians and Surgeons of the hospitals of N. Y., then just 
established for similar purposes, and the “ N. Y. Medical 
Association for furnishing Hospital Supplies,” to join M the 
Woman’s Central,” in a delegation to Washington, a com¬ 
mittee, consisting of Dr. W. H. Yan Buren, Dr. Elisha Harris, 
Dr. Jacob Harsen, and Bev. Dr. Bellows, repaired to the 
National Capitol to confer with the medical authorities and 
the War Department, in regard to the whole subject of volun¬ 
teer aid to the army. A few days study on the ground, of the 
condition of the troops arriving at Washington, and of the 
character and military training of the officers and surgeons 
accompanying them; an observation of the immense pressure 
on the War Department, and on the Medical Bureau—- 
satisfied the Committee that our army was expanding with 
a rapidity which made the existing machinery in any depart¬ 
ment, labor and strain, as would a small engine, built only 
to work a river steamboat, if transferred to an ocean vessel. 
They found every bureau overwhelmed with work and em¬ 
barrassed by the prodigious, though natural ignorance of the 
swarms of young and inexperienced officers, who neither knew 
what was wanted, nor how to supply their wants when they 
discovered them. Begiments arriving at Washington, after 
thirty-six hours passed in cattle-cars with insufficient food, 
and without sleep, were kept standing in the street from 
twelve to eighteen hours longer, because their Colonel or 
Quartermaster did not know how to make a requisition for 
food or quarters. Surgeons could not ask for medicines in 
terms that the Medical Bureau could recognize, and it took 
at the very least a fortnight when they did, to get their requisi¬ 
tion filled. The Purveyor’s store-rooms, to the Committee’s 
view, presented an ominous vacancy, and the total aspect of 
the Medical Bureau was that of dignified routine and a Bip 
Yan Winkle sleepiness, that alarmed them indescribably for 
the medical prospects of the army. There was nothing pecu¬ 
liar, remarkable, or specially blameworthy in this state of things. 
The Medical Bureau had been for years one of the best-ordered 
bureaus in the Government. Its business since the Mexican 
war had been very slight, and was well done. In that war its 
duties had not exceeded its abilities and resources. It did not 


10 


expect to prove otherwise than wholly equal to any emer¬ 
gencies likely to arise now. A mighty war, not at all recog¬ 
nized in its growing proportions, had broken out. Those most 
engaged in meeting the immediate pressure, had least oppor¬ 
tunity to study the future necessities it would create. Officials, 
whether in the civil, military or medical service, seemed, in 
proportion to the length of their services and their education 
in technical routine, to be least aware of the new bottles which 
would be required to hold the new wine, least expectant of 
the vast strain that was to be put on the Government machinery, 
and of the necessity of immediately strengthening and enlarg¬ 
ing it; manning it with new and more vigorous officials, and 
working it on a broader and more generous plan. And yet 
there were reasons for great care in this urgently called-for re¬ 
form. The Cabinet officers, new in their places, could not dis¬ 
pense with the experience and routine knowledge of the old 
heads of Bureaus; nor could they, without alarm and anxiety, 
see even the inadequate machinery of the Government tam¬ 
pered with by zeal and patriotism. They had to stand for 
order and method amid the convulsions and freshets of the 
time; and there can be no doubt that the reluctance with 
which all changes have since been effected at Washington—the 
official vis inertias —has been of the utmost benefit, considering 
the strength and ignorance, the impatient zeal, and often pre¬ 
cipitate patriotism which have so constantly sought to revolu¬ 
tionize bureaus and departments. 

The Committee had the great advantage of the judgment of 
one of its members, who had for five years been not only a 
member of the Medical Staff, U. S. A., but who had served for 
three years in the Medical Bureau itself. To a thorough ac¬ 
quaintance with the routine of the department, he added sixteen 
years experience in civil practice, where he had attained an 
enviable, not to say an unrivalled position ; to zeal he added 
knowledge; to humanity, judgment; to aspiration, patience. The 
weight of his professional character, both in the Medical Staff 
and in the profession at large,- proved not only of invaluable 
service at the inauguration of the Sanitary Commission, but has 
been, in all medical questions ever since, the guiding and deci¬ 
sive influence. It is not too much to say, that without him, the 


11 


Sanitary Commission would have lacked its medical balance- 
wheel, if not its medical mainspring.* 

The longer the Committee conferred with the Medical Bureau, 
the more it watched the operations of the War Department, 
the closer its observation of the men arriving, and of the camps 
about Washington—the more deeply and anxiously convinced 
it became, that neither the Government, the War Depart¬ 
ment, the Bureau, the Army, nor the People, fully understood 
the herculean nature of the business we had entered upon, or 
were half prepared to meet the necessities which, in a few 
weeks or months, would be pressing crushingly upon them! 
Discovering the extreme difficulty of obtaining accurate infor¬ 
mation, even from the Government itself—perplexed and em¬ 
barrassed by the suddenness and extent of the war on its hands 
—the futility of any attempts to carry out the plans of the be¬ 
nevolent association, whose delegates they were, without a 
much larger kind of machinery, and a much more extensive 
system than had been contemplated in any of their organiza¬ 
tions, the idea of a “Sanitary Commission,” with a resident 
staff at Washington, presented itself to the Committee, as the 
only solution of the difficulties with which the benevolent in¬ 
tentions of their constituents, and the actual necessities of the 
army, were threatened, by the imperfect preparations and in¬ 
adequate means of the Government, under the extreme and grow¬ 
ing pressure of the wants of hundreds of thousands of men in the 
field. The more the Committee considered the inevitable ne¬ 
cessities of a volunteer army, without experience of the perils of 
camp-life, the more urgent appeared the necessity for such a 
guardian, outside organization, which should undertake in ad¬ 
vance, the labor, which both England and France had been 
compelled to assume after a most terrible experience—the labor 
of calling the attention of the whole volunteer army, by a sys¬ 
tem of inquiry and advice, to the peril of neglecting the con¬ 
ditions of health, and to the immense advantages of the strictest 
regard to sanitary and hygienic principles. Officers of the reg¬ 
ular army, and even the rank and file, accustomed to live in 
military quarters, and carefully instructed in the literature of 


* Prof. W. H. Yan Buren, M. D. 



12 


tlieir profession, or trained to its usages, were to be supposed to 
be fully acquainted, theoretically and practically, with this sub¬ 
ject. But what could be expected from the great body of vol¬ 
unteers—officers and men ? Must there not inevitably ensue 
most disastrous consequences, if this body, constituting eleven- 
twelfths of the whole force, were not by some extraordinary 
means instructed in some other than the slow and expensive 
school of experience, in the necessities of camp-police, of ven¬ 
tilation, of personal cleanliness, and of whatever else belongs to 
the new conditions of camp-life? 

Urged on by the warnings of late and terrible mortality in 
the Italian and Crimean wars, the Committee who visited Wash¬ 
ington, at first, solely with reference to opening a good under¬ 
standing with the Government, and especially with the Medical 
Department in respect to the supply of hospital clothing, be¬ 
came still more interested in obtaining the appointment by the 
Government of a Preventive service,—the ordering of a Sani¬ 
tary Commission, to be charged with the duty of obtaining all 
requisite knowledge of the subject, and of diffusing among the 
troops such information, warnings and advice, as their inexperi¬ 
ence of camp-life made indispensable. 

On broaching this idea to the Government, it was very soon 
made plain that it would not appoint a Sanitary Commission, 
such as England and France had appointed—a commission with 
real powers. What was really needed, was a regularly consti¬ 
tuted official body, with ample powers to recommend and to en¬ 
force such regulations for the health of the troops, as their ex¬ 
traordinary exposures required. And, it need hardly be said, 
that in military bodies, the only really inoffensive form of advice, 
is the authoritative form; for then, personal feelings are sunk in 
official rights and duties. But the Government, too busy, too 
inexperienced itself in the matter in hand, made the mistake of 
accepting only the proffered services of a volunteer Sanitary 
Commission, instead of appointing a thoroughly governmental 
and truly official body of commissioners, and entrusting to them, 
with suitable powers, the sanitary oversight of the volunteer 
troops. This mistake has, no doubt, cost hundreds of lives, and 
will cost thousands more. It was a national and an honest mis¬ 
take on the part of the Government—who had little time to 


13 


give to tlie subject, and gave any only under the most persist¬ 
ent pressure of those interested in the matter. 

Finding, however, that this was the settled policy of the 
Government, the friends of the plan were driven to try the next 
best thing, although greatly removed from it in efficacy ; and 
that was to obtain the ordering of a Sanitary Commission with¬ 
out rights or powers—a simply advisory body, who were to 
have the privilege of visiting camps, hospitals and barracks, 
and of insinuating sanitary advice, and obtaining such whole¬ 
some influence as a semi-official, but really powerless body 
could acquire by the self recommending merit of its Inspectors. 
And this privilege, after much straining, was at last conceded 
by the Government, on condition that the Medical Department 
of the army would consent to it. 

The consent of the Medical Bureau, with whom the Com¬ 
mittee had already established pleasant and amicable relations, 
while considering the subject of Hospital Supplies, was duly 
solicited to the appointment of a Sanitary Commission, with¬ 
out powers and emoluments, although with duties enough to 
satisfy the most active. Happily, or unhappily—in the event 
it seems difficult to say which—the Medical Bureau was then 
under the control of the excellent and respected Dr. It. II. 
Wood, acting Surgeon-General of the U. S. Army. Dr. Law- 
son, so long Surgeon-General, was yet alive, but beyond the 
power of active service, slowly dying at Norfolk, Ya. Dr. 
Wood entered kindly and heartily into the wishes of the Com¬ 
mittee, became a convert to its views, asked the Secretary of 
War for the appointment of a Sanitary Commission to be put 
on confidential relations with the Bureau, and to aid it with 
counsel and advice, and in such other ways as might prove con¬ 
venient. The Commission was to be on the most confidential 
footing with the Medical Bureau—not on a stiff, official foot¬ 
ing ; for that must spoil all, where no official rights or powers 
existed on its part—but on a cordial, confidential footing, by 
means of which the sanitary knowledge and medical science and 
sympathy of the country could be poured into the Bureau 
through the Commission, which proposed to unite, with its own 
limited number and attainments, the chief scientific and medi¬ 
cal wisdom of the whole country, in the form of Associates. 


14 


The honest plan was to aid the Medical Bureau without noise, 
without rivalry, and without stint, in sustaining the enormous 
weight of responsibility and care thrown upon its shoulders by 
the sudden successive expansions of the army from 20,000 to 
what soon became half a million and more of men. Dr. "Wood, 
a man proud of his Staff and of honorable pride himself, was 
not too proud to acknowledge the advantages and the necessity 
of this outside aid. He felt that it was no impugnment of his own 
dignity, or that of his Staff, to accept and even to ask for it. The 
good faith of the arrangement was guaranteed by the selection 
of several distinguished regular army officers, as members of 
the Commission, and by the appointment of the Acting Surgeon- 
General himself as one of them. He still continues a member 
of this Board, in friendly relations with every member of it. 
Had Dr. Wood remained at the head of the Medical Depart¬ 
ment, whatever other consequences might have ensued, the 
Sanitary Commission could never have come into the least 
collision with the Bureau. They would have been one body 
and one soul—the Bureau, carrying out, with it sample powers 
and facilities, whatever was seen to be well planned and 
judicious, and in furtherance of the grand objects belonging 
equally to the Medical Department and to the Commission. 
There was no pretence at that time (a few weeks had taught 
them so much), that the Medical Bureau had, or could have, a 
proper supervision of the sanitary wants and perils of the vol¬ 
unteer force. To meet, promptly, even, the purely medical 
wants of such an army, was beyond its utmost power. How, 
then, could it hope to discharge the duties appertaining to sani¬ 
tary inspection ? and what physician, of generous, comprehen¬ 
sive and humane character, in Dr. Wood’s position, could have 
failed to see, as he saw, the duty of welcoming such aid without 
suspicion, provided it come from a body of tolerable competency 
and public responsibleness ? 

When, after long, patient and heart-rending delay, the papers, 
authorizing the Commission, were fully agreed upon, engrossed, 
and waited only theHinal signature of the Secretary of War to 
become an order of the Department, Dr. Lawson’s death oc¬ 
curred, and the accession of his regular successor, by seniority 
in the Staff, immediately followed by what seemed to be a mat¬ 
ter of course. Dr, Wood, who had, for many years, had the 


15 


duties of this office without its honors, and who, it was under¬ 
stood, was, in the very highest quarters, urged as the proper 
person to become Surgeon-General, nobly declined being con¬ 
sidered a candidate, in allegiance to what he considered to be 
the good order and fellowship of the Staff itself. Whereupon, 
Dr. Finley came into office, and immediately expressed himself 
as opposed to the whole arrangement made by his predecessor 
for the appointment of the Sanitary Commission ; declared that 
he would have nothing to do with it; that, if it went into ope¬ 
ration, the responsibility must rest with Dr. Wood ; that it was 
a mischievous and perilous conception to allow any such outside 
body to come into being;—but, in consideration of the public 
wish and expectation, he consented not to oppose it, if the Com¬ 
mission would confine themselves strictly to the oversight of 
the volunteer force, and not meddle with the regulars. This 
was agreed to, and then Dr. Wood was instructed to inform the 
Secretary of War, that the Medical Bureau would consent to 
the issuing of the papers, which had been mysteriously stopped, 
constituting the Sanitary Commission. 

The letter to the Secretary of War, first calling his formal at¬ 
tention to the subject, is dated Washington, May 18,1861. The 
Acting Surgeon-General’s letter to the Department, asking for 
the appointment of the Sanitary Commission, bears date, “ Sur¬ 
geon-General’s Office, May 22, 1861.” “ The draft of powers” 

asked by the Committee from the Government, is dated May 
23, 1861. The order for the Commission was issued by the 
Secretary of War, June 9,1861, and approved by the President, 
June 13, 1861. On that day the Sanitary Commission was 
organized, and sent in its plan of organization to the War De¬ 
partment, which returned it with the following endorsement: 

“War Department, Washington, 

“ June 13, 1861. 

“ I hereby approve of the plan of organization proposed by 
“ the Sanitary Commission as above given ; and all persons in 
“the employ of the United States Government are directed and 
“ enjoined to respect and further the inquiries and objects of 
“ this Commission, to the utmost of their ability. 

“ Simon Cameron, 

“ Secretary of War.” 




16 


Thus, after a month’s struggle with the apathy, preoccupation 
or suspicions of the Government, was the Sanitary Commission 
launched into existence. We have the best of reasons for 
knowing that the scheme was considered by the Government 
troublesome, impracticable and dangerous; that, to use the 
language of the President, “ it might become the fifth wheel to 
the waggon”—a very embarrassing appendage. One of the 
most sagacious and respected members of the Cabinet was 
frank enough to say, after two years experience of the Sanitary 
Commission, “ I confess now, that I had no faith in the 
Commission when it started ; prophesied that it would upset 
itself in six months, and that we should be lucky if it did 
not help to upset us ! Ffone of us had faith in it; but it seemed 
easier to let it destroy itself, than to resist the popular urgency 
which called so lustily for a trial of it. I am free to confess 
now, that it has been of the greatest service to the country; 
that it has occasioned none of the evils expected from it; and 
that it has lived down all the fears and misgivings of the Gov¬ 
ernment. I hear from no quarter a word against it.” Thus, 
it was with a general suspicion on the part of the Government, 
and a particular objection on the part of the Medical Bureau, 
.that the Sanitary Commission started upon its uncertain and 
struggling existence. The cool or cautious sentiments of the 
Government were no serious trial—because their actions were 
friendly and helpful, and their official approbation emphatic. 
But the whole original theory of the Commission was dashed to 
the ground by the sudden and unwelcome accession to the 
charge of the Medical Bureau, of a gentleman conscientiously 
opposed, on grounds not without weight and plausibility, to the 
whole conception, functions and plans of the Sanitary Commis¬ 
sion. From the moment he took his seat, as Chief of the 
Bureau, all cordial intercourse between the Bureau and the 
body appointed to inquire and advise, in its interests, became 
practically impossible. Whose fault this was, it does not be¬ 
come interested parties to decide. The public, who read this 
unvarnished history of the facts in the case, who perhaps know 
the character and antecedents of the men composing the Sani¬ 
tary Commission, are fully capable of forming their own opinion 
on the subject. Perchance the Commission might have been 


IT 


more cautious and discreet than it was ; probably it sometimes 
attributed to the negligence and inefficiency of the Medical 
Staff, what was only due to the imperfection of their powers 
and resources. Yery likely, it did injustice to the motives and 
the conduct of individual members of the Staff. Possibly it 
was not wholly free from the spirit of rivalry, of criticism, and 
the love of power. But it seems to have exercised the can¬ 
dor, the discrimination, the calmness and the moderation to be 
expected from a body of men conscious of the honesty and dis¬ 
interestedness of their motives, sure of their decent competency 
to the task they had undertaken, and possessed of the confidence 
and entrusted with the resources of a generous public—a body 
of men who were set to look after the health of 500,000 citizen 
soldiers, and who, at the outset, disposed to repose full faith in 
the ability, zeal and efficiency of the regular Medical Depart¬ 
ment, were compelled, as their investigations went on, to see 
how inadequate either the system or the staff was to satisfy the 
expectations and the demands of the nation at large, whether in 
respect of the prevention of sickness, or the care and cure of it. 
It is not to be concealed that when, by the act of the Surgeon- 
General, they were practically cut off from inquiry and advice, 
from counsel and co-operation with the Medical Bureau, they 
naturally turned to the only alternative left, independent ac¬ 
tivity and sharp criticism. What they could not quietly amend 
by their own exertions, or help to remedy by private remon¬ 
strance, they were forced to seek to change, by public com¬ 
plaint and an appeal to Congress and to public opinion. 

That the Commission began with a totally different intention, 
is certain. When, for instance, as has already been stated, the 
public mind was so inflamed in regard to the necessities of all 
kinds of supplies for the sick and wounded, they sought authorita¬ 
tive information from the Medical Department on the subject, 
and adopted heartily its own view of its competency to supply 
every want, if not at once, then after a short delay. But 
how mistaken and misguiding these conclusions were, the 
public, who have since furnished sixty thousand cases of hospital 
stores for the sick and wounded, and are not yet relieved from 
this necessity, can judge for itself. And so, truth compels us to 
say, the Commission found it with the opinions of the Medical 
2 


18 


Bureau generally. Its notions of what humanity required, its 
standard of comfort in hospitals, of adequate supplies, of what 
were fit hospital buildings, of what constituted promptness in 
answering requisitions, of what was an adequate medical force 
for the care of a given number of sick men ; its judgment in 
respect of what constituted a proper foresight in furnishing a 
distant expedition, or in anticipating the probable requirements 
of an advancing column ; in providing proper prophylactic 
agents, either of vaccine virus or quinine; or of what should be 
deemed useful and effectual relations between the regular Medi¬ 
cal Staff and Brigade Surgeons, or Surgeons of Volunteers, in 
general—on all these points the Commission were compelled to 
come to an opposite judgment from that adopted by the Buireau, 
and of course to form a very unfavorable and even anxious and in¬ 
dignant conception of its wisdom and humanity. Their standard 
may have been impracticable, their expectations unsound, and 
their views incorrect; but being, nevertheless, the best which in 
a sober and conscientious judgment they could form, they were 
compelled to come to a general conclusion that the Medical Staff, 
as then organized, was not meeting the just expectations of the 
country; that if the people knew its defects, they would re¬ 
quire their radical correction, and that it was their duty to seek 
through the Government first, and then through Congress, and 
finally through public opinion at large, the reform of a system 
so ineffectual and so inhumane. 

Their own special business of preventing disease, by instituting 
an expensive and thorough system of inspection, disseminating,' 
by medical reports and personal advice, warnings and instruc¬ 
tion in respect to sanitary matters, through every volunteer 
regiment in the field (with hardly an exception), was at once 
vigorously commenced, and with immedate results of a very 
gratifying character. The publication, too, of a senes of medi¬ 
cal tractates, carefully prepared, by the most learned authori¬ 
ties, for the use of the surgeon in hospital and field, proceeded 
rapidly forward. A system of hospital supplies organized 
in the most extensive way, hereafter to be described, was, with 
the utmost pains, extended to every column, expedition, and 
almost every post or hospital of the entire army, eking out defi¬ 
ciency everywhere, and in many places supplying far the largest 


19 


part of the comforts of the sick and wounded. At the end of 
six months they had taken care of 6,000 and upwards of disa¬ 
bled soldiers in the city of Washington, who, but for their prov¬ 
idence, must have suffered serious, not to say fatal, hardships 
in their transit from the hospitals and the ranks to their distant 
homes. They at once set a going a bureau of statistics, which 
will enable them to write ultimately a most important chapter 
of the interior history of the war. But all this was done with¬ 
out the facilities or the aid of the machinery or the support and 
co-operation of the Medical Bureau, which, had it been freely 
lent to them, as the Government and as the Acting Surgeon- 
General had designed, would have quadrupled their success and 
multiplied indefinitely their powera of usefulness. Then their 
counsel, advice and sympathy would all have found official chan¬ 
nels and full authorization. The Medical Bureau would have 
supplied the missing link in their usefulness, and might have 
had all the support, sympathy and co-operation of the medical 
and the domestic public, which were behind the Sanitary Com¬ 
mission, in furtherance of its own ends and aims. Whatever it 
wanted in respect of military rank, or additional force, or larger 
appropriations, it could have had, if it had not so unwisely taken 
the attitude, in a mistaken pride and vain sense of personal dig¬ 
nity, of opposition and resistance to the Sanitary Commission; 
and the Sanitary Commission, if only the Surgeon-General had 
consented to be its friend, might have carried out with more 
complete success the humane intentions of that public which 
had so generously trusted it with money and supplies. 

Can it be wondered at, that the Commission felt indignant that 
the personal vanity and obstinate conceit of one single man, of 
Conscientious narrowness and well-intentioned weakness, should 
have frustrated, or made so nearly abortive, plans founded in 
the largest European experience, commended by the medical 
intelligence and the humane feeling of the great centres of 
knowledge and philanthropy throughout this whole country, 
and involving the lives and comforts of so many thousands of 
our citizen soldiery ? 

Fully convinced that all that any outside organization could 
do for the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers, was very 
little compared with what an enlightened, humane and earnest 
Medical Bureau could do, using the means and machinery of 


20 


the United States Government; fully determined not to become 
the rival or substitute of the Medical Department,—the Commis¬ 
sion determined to adhere strictly to the theory on which it 
had started. It was appointed to advise, to aid and assist 
the Medical Bureau. However inimical the immediate occu¬ 
pants of the Bureau might be to them, it did not change the 
fact that the Bureau was the only centre from which medical 
care and supervision could be efficiently dispensed to the whole 
army. To allow that Bureau to remain inefficient, narrow and 
cast in the slough of the past, while an outside organization 
vainly attempted to supply its defects and negligences, was not 
to be acquiesced in for one instant longer than it could not be 
helped. Satisfied that while the Medical Bureau was controlled 
by the lineal successor to Dr. Lawson, this would be the inevi¬ 
table result, the Commission resolved to use every effort in its 
power, first to prevent his appointment—and when that failed, to 
secure his removal, and the appointment of a competent Surgeon- 
General by Act of Congress. There were no personal objections 
to Dr. Finley, no imputation on his qualities as a Christian gentle¬ 
man, or a faithful official. He had simply been too long in the ser¬ 
vice, and was too rooted and grounded in contracted notions, too 
prejudiced against change and enlargement, to give any promise 
of adequacy or efficiency in the vastly responsible and important 
position he was called to. Without medical reputation, and too 
old to acquire it, inflexible, dogmatic and proud, he resisted, on 
principle, all new and enlarged views of a medical or adminis¬ 
trative kind, and, in all probability, would have caused, in a 
year of honest adherence to his own policy, more suffering in 
the army, by pure default of ability to prevent it, than twenty 
Sanitary Commissions, in full career, could have alleviated. It 
became, under these circumstances, the most urgent business of 
the Sanitary Commission to bring about a change in the control 
of the Medical Bureau; and, as several members of the Board 
-were members of government bureaus, and even connected 
with the Medical Bureau itself—so that, as a board, action would 
have been indecorous—it became necessary for individul mem¬ 
bers of the Commission to proceed, upon their own respon¬ 
sibility, to urge upon the President, the Secretary of War, the 
Military Committees of both Houses, and leading members of 
Government, the pressing necessity of a reorganization of the 


21 


Medical Department, with an eye to a new head and a new 
regime. With what earnestness and pertinacity this was 
pressed upon Mr. Lincoln himself; that over-worked, but ever 
open-eared and humane father of his people, must still have a 
painful recollection! How strenuously it was called for by 
commanders-in-chief, personally appearing, with the Head of the 
Commission, before the President, and before the Secretary of 
War, with urgent petitions for a reform of the Medical Depart¬ 
ment, one of them also will remember. The Military Commit¬ 
tees heard with great patience, again and again, earnest argu¬ 
ments in favor of a bill reorganizing the Medical Department, 
which had been drawn up by members of the Commission, 
after the most deliberate counsel with distinguished members of 
the Medical Staff; for there was no lack of restless desire in 
the younger and more educated members of the Medical Staff, 
to bring about a thorough reform. Several bills, prepared in¬ 
dependently of the Sanitary Commission, had been sent into 
the Military Committees. Congress was full of complaints of 
our medical affairs. The prosent Secretary of War, oil the 
third or fourth day of his instalment, accompanied by the Corn- 
man der-in-Chief of the Army, visited the central office of the 
Sanitary Commission, at Washington, and in the presence of 
one of the most influential committees ever assembled at the 
capital, listened with careful attention to an exposition of the 
medical state of affairs in the army, and the necessity of an 
immediate reform in the Medical Bureau. He replied with 
most encouraging assurances of his own conviction of the ne¬ 
cessity of some change, to which he promised to give an early, 
thorough, and persistent attention. The Commission, which 
had taken wholly on faith the sincerity of the late Secretary’s 
professions of sympathy and interest, felt that in his successor’s 
accession to the War Department, they had secured a warm 
and consistent friend. They hailed his elevation to office with 
that general delight which cheered the whole country. If his 
offers and promises to the Commission have not all been re¬ 
deemed, it is doubtless due to that enlargement of experience, 
that growth of practical wisdom, which in times like these so 
rapidly expands the high and responsible head of a department, 
and makes him, by degrees, insensible to the labors, sacrifices, 


22 


and claims, of those lie once thought indispensable to the public 
service. 

At length, but not without the most vehement endeavors, the 
most resolute opposition, and the slowest progress, a bill, 
seriously modified and impaired from the original, but contain¬ 
ing the important feature of the abandonment of the seniority 
principle, and the selection of the most competent and eligible 
candidate from the whole Staff for the head of the Bureau, was 
carried through both houses, received the President’s signature 
and became a law. 

Then the battle recommenced! The President had the nomi¬ 
nating power, which of course he would not use without the 
advice and consent of the head of the War Department, to 
which the Medical Bureau belongs. The Secretary of War, 
the moment the principle of seniority was departed from, was 
in the quandary in which any layman called to exercise a su¬ 
preme judgment on high medical matters, must find himself 
placed. He did not know, and could not know, who was the 
deserving candidate for the place. There was extreme danger 
that the appointment would become a matter of accident, guess 
or favor. It was well understood that the late acting Surgeon- 
General had obtained about as good as a promise from the 
President himself that he should succeed to the Bureau—an ap¬ 
pointment which would have been eminently acceptable to the 
Commission in its personal character, and which, to get rid of 
the new incumbent, they would gladly have used theirjutmost 
exertions to procure. But when the appointment became, by 
law, one that must be based purely on qualifications, they could 
not consider a man of the age and the routine habits of the late act¬ 
ing Surgeon-General the fittest man for the position. It grieved 
them sorely that they could not see it to be their duty to urge 
his appointment. 

What did they do? Prom the date of a prospective reform, 
they had given three months’ conscientious attention to the in¬ 
quiry who the man was in the whole Medical Staff, who united 
in himself the largest measure of medical, military, administra¬ 
tive and general qualifications for the office of Surgeon-Gen¬ 
eral? Without personal acquaintance, much less personal 
friendship, with Dr. W. A. Hammond, then assistant surgeon 


23 


on the Medical Staff, all the inquiries they made ended in con¬ 
centrating their preference upon him. They found him a man in 
the prime of life, who had passed twelve years in the medical 
service of the U. S. A., and was thoroughly acquainted with the 
routine of the Department. His scientific propensities had not 
slumbered or slept while on the Medical Staff, though a life 
there is eminently unfavorable, in time of peace, to professional 
or medical ambition. lie had distinguished himself abroad and 
at home by his original investigations—was known as no other 
man on the Medical Staff was known in the civil-medical pro¬ 
fession throughout Europe and the United States. Quitting 
the army to take a professorship in the University of Mary¬ 
land, he had, in spite of his loss of grade, immediately 
abandoned his professorship and returned to the Medical Staff 
when the war broke out. From the beginning of the war, in 
his hospitals at Baltimore, Wheeling and Cumberland, and in 
his various communications to the public journals, he had com¬ 
mended himself to our Inspectors as the ablest and most en¬ 
lightened medical officer with whom they met. First in¬ 
duced by their representations to think of him, competent 
medical investigators were put upon his track; his pretensions 
thoroughly explored; his views and purposes carefully inquired 
into, and a solid and settled conclusion arrived at, into which 
no grain of personal predilection, or bargain, or mutual under¬ 
standing entered, that this was the man for Surgeon-General 
and of course the man to be urged upon the Secretary of War. 

Before Mr. Cameron left office, the Commission had arrived 
at this conclusion, and had presented Dr. Hammond’s name for 
the Surgeon-Generalship. For reasons utterly unknown to 
them, it was at once and even petulantly rejected, with an as¬ 
surance that whoever else might get the place of Surgeon-Gen¬ 
eral, Dr. Hammond should never have it—a conclusion we 
were forced to trace to some bog of Pennsylvania politics—the 
Keystone being the State from which both Mr. Cameron, his 
successor, and Dr. Hammond and his ancestry had sprung. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Cameron went out of office, and Mr. Stan¬ 
ton came* in. Dr. Finley was relieved of duty, and soon went, 
of his own choice, on the retired list, and the course was clear 
for a competent successor. The bill for reforming the Medical 
Department was now in force. The evidence of Dr. Hammond’s 


24 


right to this place was at once laid before the War Department, 
the President, and the Military Committee of the Senate. Pe¬ 
titions of the highest professional authority from the great 
cities besought the Government for his appointment. What the 
reluctance was to mate it, is still hid in darkness, but that it was 
so great that the recollection of it still haunts the Department, 
and chills its perfect good-will, is obvious enough to all who 
have watched over our medical interests at Washington. Still, 
the nomination was finally wrung out of the President, who was 
clearly embarrassed by great invisible difficulties. Probably the 
chief obstacle w T as the disinclination of the Secretary of War, 
And this disinclination was either an inheritance from his pred¬ 
ecessor, or a purely personal antipathy to a man of a very de¬ 
cided and commanding character, who would very likely man¬ 
age his Bureau in his own way, or not at all. There is anotiier 
hypothesis. In the medical bill, drawn up and pushed through 
by the Commission, a provision had been made for a certain 
number of medical inspectors—high officers on the Staff—to be 
selected from the most thoroughly competent medical men in 
the whole service, regular and volunteer, and to whom should 
be committed the inspectorial and sanitary duties, which the 
Commission, under great difficulties, had been performing in a 
manner not at all to its own satisfaction. They wished as quickly 
as possible, to throw these duties into more competent hands, 
which could be clothed with an official authority that they did 
not possess. The Surgeon-General, to whom, by moral right, 
belonged the responsibility of selecting these inspectors, had, 
after careful consultation with the most learned and disinterest¬ 
ed advisers, proposed a dignified and thoroughly deserving set of 
candidates for these places. This list, was, by his own order, 
presented to the Secretary of War. The most urgent necessity 
existed, in the judgment of the Medical Bureau, and of the 
Sanitary Commission—put by Dr. Hammond’s accession to of¬ 
fice, on its original confidential footing with the Medical Bureau 
—for the immediate appointment of these inspectors. Hundreds 
of men were languishing in hospitals who were entitled to dis¬ 
charge and could not procure it, for the want of the* existence 
of the very officers, who had this duty prescribed to them. The 
medical affairs of the army clamorously called for a staff to 
whom the Chief of the Bureau could safely confide the execu- 


25 


tion of his prompt and energetic plans. But no nominations 
were made, or could be got out of the Secretary, until Congress 
(the House of Representatives) passed a resolution inquiring 
why the Medical Inspectors were not appointed according to 
the bill which had been passed through, ordering their immedi¬ 
ate creation ? When the nominations were sent in, just half of 
them consisted of the names which Dr. Hammond had recom¬ 
mended ; the other half was composed apparently of political 
favorites—for they were, in medical and other respects, wholly 
undeserving of the responsible positions assigned them. Worst 
of all, a medical man, of no reputation in his profession, un¬ 
known indeed, or unfavorably known in the army, was foisted mys¬ 
teriously into a position, second only to that of Surgeon-General, 
that of Chief Inspector—to the utter ruin of the whole signifi¬ 
cance of that corps, which in the consequent squabbles and 
struggles it has passed through under the personal influences 
exerted to keep the Chief Inspector in place, has almost wholly 
failed of the object of its creation—a result for which the Sec¬ 
retary of War may thank himself and his unmedical advisers—• 
but for which the country will not thank him. It seems proba¬ 
ble that the ill feeling connected with these appointments, lies 
at the root of the coolness which has marked the relations of 
the War Department and the Medical Bureau, and the War 
Department and the Sanitary Commission, since Dr. Hammond 
came into office. Happily, beyond the loss of the services of 
the Inspectorial Corps, and beyond the occasional mysterious 
disappearance for a month or two, from his post, of the Surgeon- 
General, sent down near the enemy’s lines, possibly in the hope 
that his disgust with his anomalous position might induce him to 
resign, no serious injury has been done the Medical Department, 
by this unhappy and most unjustifiable want of cordiality ; for 
the vigor, sagacity and fairness with which the medical affairs of 
the army have been administered by Dr. Hammond, are more 
than enough to dwindle any impediments of this kind into 
insignificance. It is well known that when he entered upon 
the Bureau, its business was very much behind-hand, and yet 
constantly increasing, while the necessary clerks to bring it up, 
although asked for, were denied. A. wide-spread disaffection 
with the Bureau also existed throughout the west, which Dr. 


26 


Hammond earnestly sought leave personally to explore—a 
condition essential to any intelligent reform—yet which was 
again and again denied him in the War Office. Notwithstand¬ 
ing a late Commission of Inquiry, composed in part of 
personal enemies, sent by the War Department, to scrutinize 
the conduct of the Medical Bureau, and notwithstanding 
newspaper rumors, to the prejudice of Dr. Hammond’s honor, 
the Sanitary Commission, whose opportunities are equal to 
any body’s for observing and judging the conduct of affairs, 
regards Dr. Hammond’s administration with the most perfect 
confidence and admiration—believing him to be a personally 
incorruptible man, a man of high administrative qualities, and 
a true and great benefactor in his department, to medical and 
sanitary science, to the Homes of the land, the soldiers them¬ 
selves, and the national cause. $ 

We have expended all this space and time upon the early 
struggles of the Sanitary Commission, not merely for the pur¬ 
pose of exhibiting the resolution with which it forced itself into 
a real existence, and became a power in the Nation, but more 
especially to show how sturdily it held on to its original princi* 
pie,—the root of whatever good it has accomplished, namely, 
that the Government is, or ought to be, the soldier’s best friend, 
being the only friend in a situation to give him constant and 
efficient protection; and that the main service any outside 
allies can afford him, must consist in arousing the Govern¬ 
ment to its duties to the soldier, and accustoming the soldier 
to recognize, respect and lean upon the Government care. 
Whatever struggles with the Medical Department, the Sanitary 
Commission has at any time had, have always been not in the 
way of obtaining rights, privileges, or opportunities for itself; 
of making itself more active, important and influential; but, on 
the contrary, always in the way of stirring up the Department 
to a larger sense of its own duty, a more complete occupation 
of its own sphere, and such a successful administration of its 
affairs as would tend to render the Sanitary Commission, and 
all other outside organizations of beneficence to the army, 
unnecessary. 

The principle was seen from the first, and has been resolutely 
maintained under all circumstances, that the people’s care for 


27 

the soldiers, if permitted a free and spontaneous course, might 
become a main dependence of the army, and thus weaken the 
sense of responsibility'and the zeal and efficiency of the official 
sources of supply and protection. This would be so unmeas¬ 
ured an evil, that, rather than incur the risk of it, it was a 
serious question, during the first year at least, nor has it ever 
since ceased to come up as a doubt, whether the regular service 
of the Government, left wholly to itself, would not more rapidly 
and thoroughly cure its own defects than when placed under 
any system of bolstering and supplementing which humanity 
and outside sympathy could invent or apply. How long and 
how far, it was continually asked from the very first, is it safe 
and wise for the nation, in its home character, to undertake to 
do what the Government can do, and ought to do ? Will not 
the Government channels shrink and dry up in precise propor¬ 
tion to the freedom with which the sluices of private or popular 
beneficence are found running? Will not officials neglect their 
duties, if they find other people ready to do them in their stead ? 
Great as the sufferings of the first few months might be, were 
the people to throw the army entirely on the care of the 
Government, at the end of two years, or of five years, w r ould 
the adequacy and constancy of the supplies, the methodical 
application of them, and the general results of official routine, 
discipline, and singleness of rule, secure a final result into which 
less suffering would have entered than on any other conceivable 
plan, however humanely and generously worked out? 

The answer to this most urgent and pertinent question is, that 
in a national life like our own, a democracy, where the people 
take a universal part in political affairs, the Government has no 
option in the case. The popular affections and sympathies will 
force themselves into the administration of army and all other 
affairs in times of deep national awakening. The practical 
question was not, is it best to allow the army to depend in any 
degree upon the care of the people, as distinguished from the 
Government? Considered on administrative grounds alone, 
that question, we have no doubt, should be answered nega¬ 
tively. But no such question existed in a pure and simple 
form. It was this question rather: How shall this rising tide 
of popular sympathy, expressed in the form pf sanitary sup- 


28 


plies, and offers of personal service and advice, be rendered 
least hurtful to the army system, and most useful to the soldiers 
themselves? How shall it be kept from injuring the order, 
efficiency, and zeal of the regular bureau, and at the same time 
be left to do its intended work of succor and sympathy ; to act 
as a steady expression of the people’s watchful care of their 
army, and as a true helper and supplementer of what the 
Government may find it possible or convenient to do from its 
own resources ? It was this mixed question the Sanitary Com¬ 
mission found itself called to answer ; and its whole plan and 
working has been one steady reply to it. It could not be 
deemed wise, much less was it possible, to discourage and 
deaden the active sympathies of the people. They would fol¬ 
low their regiments to the field with home-comforts and pro¬ 
visions against wounds and sickness ! The women would hurry 
to the hospitals and camps! For the first six months after the 
war began, the Departments at Washington were fairly be- 
seiged by humane committees, masculine and feminine; busi¬ 
ness wa3 interrupted, clogged, and snarled by the obtrusion of 
aid and comfort. Every regiment that went into the field had 
another regiment of anxious friends pushing into the camp to 
look after it, and supply its possible or real wants. State and 
local relief committees were named Legion ; and it looked as if 
the Commissariat and Medical Departments were going to be 
swamped in popular ministrations. The beauty and glory of 
the affections which lead to this self-sacrificing attendance and 
provision were not to be lost or dimmed by neglect. Hay, they 
were to be cherished with the utmost assiduity and the fullest 
sense of their national value. 

On the other hand, the method, efficiency, and development 
of the Governmental resources, the order and sway of the 
Medical Department was not to be sacrificed, or delayed by 
the allowance of an unregulated, superfluous, and sentimental 
beneficence. Scylla was to be shunned, and Charybdis not 
grazed. The people could not, let them try as hard as they 
would, do the Government’s work. They could neither build, 
nor furnish, nor work the hospitals. They could not even 
supply them with nurses—for men as well as women are abso¬ 
lutely necessary in that service, in military hospitals. On the 


29 


other hand, a popular, volunteer army could not live at all cut 
off from home sympathy, and from the demonstration of popu¬ 
lar interest and watchfulness ; nor could Government fitly un¬ 
dertake certain services which the people were ready to render 
to the army, and which might, with extreme wisdom and 
pains, be permitted and even encouraged, without injury to 
discipline and official responsibility. 

Between these two important and indispensable interests, 
Home feeling, and Governmental resposibility and method, the 
Sanitary Commission steered its delicate and difficult way. 
It assigned to itself the task, requiring constant tact, of di¬ 
recting, without weakening or cooling the warm and copious 
stream of popular beneficence toward the army. This owed 
its heat and fullness very much to its spontaneous and local 
character. Towns, cities, counties, States, were deeply inte¬ 
rested in their own boys. To labor, night and day, for the very 
regiment that had rendevoused in its square, or upon its com¬ 
mon, to knit socks for feet that had crossed their own thresholds, 
and garments to cover hearts that throbbed with their own 
blood, was not only easy for the people—it was a necessity. 
And to send these by the hands of trusted townsmen, who 
should see the comforts they had created put upon the very 
backs, or into the very mouths, they were designed for, was the 
most natural plan in the world, and seemingly the very best, as 
it certainly was the pleasantest. Why should not each State 
look after its own soldiers ? and each county, and each town, 
and each family ? Certainly, this principle of local interest and 
personal affection could be depended on, for longer and freer 
labors, than any other. Was it safe to attempt to modify it, 
to mend it, to enlighten it, and enlarge it \ It was, at least 
necessary to try. Such a spontaneous, local liberality, how¬ 
ever productive of materials and supplies of comfort, was abso¬ 
lutely unfurnished, as a very short experience proved, with the 
means and-facilities for conveying, delivering, and applying its 
resources to the army. While our soldiers were mustering at 
a few near points, and drilling and disciplining for the contest, 
it was comparatively easy to reach particular regiments 
through special delegations, and with special supplies. But 
after a few months, the armies of the Union left these con. 


venient centres, and a very few miles of mud road between a 
corps and its base, soon showed local committees the immense 
difficulties of private and special transportation. Moreover, 
when sickness began to appear, and anxiety for the well and 
strong was concentrated upon the feeble and ailing, the people 
soon began to discover that a soldier, after all, belonged more 
to the army than to his own regiment, and was ultimately 
thrown more on the care of the Federal Government, and the 
General Staff, than upon his own surgeon and immediate offi¬ 
cers. Slowly the nation learned, that new thing in the experi¬ 
ence of this generation, what a General Hospital is, and what 
the course taken with a sick soldier must be. They discovered 
that men were very soon put far beyond the reach, in the sud¬ 
denness and unexpected character of their movements, of the 
knowledge and following of any local protectors; that regi¬ 
ments were liable to be thrown from North to South, from 
East to West; from Alexandria to Fort Hudson and Vicks¬ 
burg; from Newbern to Nashville and Chattanooga; and that 
their own sons and brothers, if they were to be followed and 
watched over at all, must be looked after by a national and ubi¬ 
quitous body, which was with the army everywhere, at home 
at all points, and with ends and objects that recognized neither 
State, nor county, nor regiment, but saw only the United 
States, or Union soldier, and ministered to him impartially, ac¬ 
cording to his need, with absolute indifference as to where he 
hailed from. To, explain this state of things at the earliest 
moment, became the urgent duty of the Sanitary Commission. 
Naturally, but unfortunately, so many State and local associa¬ 
tions were already at work, and represented in or near the 
great camps, that a swarm of angry and jealous rivals gathered 
about the plan of the Sanitary Commission, and have never 
ceased to sting its agents with disparaging reports. So kind and 
worthy were the intentions of those whom these associations 
represented, and in many cases so honorable and laborious the 
efforts of these agents, so natural their prejudices and jealousies, 
that while strongly disapproving the principle involved in 
them, as radically subversive of what they were laboring to 
popularize, the Sanitary Commission could not find the heart 
to oppose them. It, therefore, simply strove to make its own 


31 


plan widely understood, and by doing the work in hand in the 
only thorough and satisfactory manner possible, to win by de¬ 
grees the confidence of the more distant and interior communi¬ 
ties. On the whole, the intelligence with which the people 
have understood and appreciated its method, is some¬ 
thing worthy of all admiration ; and the mingled sense 
and magnanimity with which they have gradually substituted 
for their original motive, a new one, the federal principle, 
which, though larger, nobler, and more patriotic, lacks 
personal incitement and local warmth and color—is a fresh 
proof of the capabilities of our people. Moreover, the 
education of our towns and villages in the principles of the 
Sanitary Commission, the overcoming of their local preju¬ 
dices, their desire to work for this regiment,'that company, 
this hospital, or that camp, has been an education in Na¬ 
tional ideas; in the principles of the Government itself; 
in the great Federal idea for which we are contending at 
such cost of blood and treasure. The objections to the San¬ 
itary Commission have been precisely the objections that led 
to the rebellion, and to the war that made this Commission 
necessary—objections to a Federal consolidation, a strong Gen¬ 
eral Government, a Nationality and not a Confederacy. State 
and local powers, were claimed to be not only more effective 
in their home and immediate spheres, but more effective out of 
their spheres, and in the promotion of ends that are universal. 
As South Carolina said she could take better care of her own 
commerce, and her own forensic interests, than the IL S. Gov¬ 
ernment, so Iowa and Missouri and Connecticut and Ohio in¬ 
sisted that they could each take better care of their own 
soldiers, after they w T ere merged in the General Union Army, 
than could any Central or Federal or United States Commis¬ 
sion, whatever its resources, or its organization. Narrow polit¬ 
ical ambition, State sensibilites, executive conceit, and the 
pecuniary interests of agents, produced the same secessional 
heresies in regard to the National Sanitary Commission, that 
they either actually created, or have vainly tended to create, 
in regard to the General Government itself. 

Yet it can truly be said, that while these tendencies have 
sometimes pulled with a fierce current against the Commission, 


32 


they have never dragged it from own moorings. They have 
borne away from it vast quantities of needed supplies upon, 
most uncertain errands ; they have greatly diminished the re¬ 
sources which should have poured into the reservoirs of the 
Sanitary Commission. But the wonder is, that in spite of them, 
there should have been so prodigious a triumph of the Federal 
principle in the humane work of ministering to the army. 
Local, personal, religious prejudices, have all yielded, more or 
less slowly, but increasingly, to the self-vindicating claims of 
the Sanitary Commission. At this moment, the only region in 
the loyal States, that is definitely out of the circle, is Missouri. 
The rest of our loyal territory is all embraced within one ring 
of method and federality. This is chiefly due to the wonderful 
spirit of Nationality that beats in the breasts of American 
women. They, even more than the men of the country, from 
their utter withdrawal from partisan strifes and local politics, 
have felt the assault upon the life of the Nation, in its true 
National import. They are infinitely less State-ish and more 
National in their pride and in their sympathies. They see the 
war in its broad, impersonal outlines—and while their particular 
and special affections are keener than men’s, their general 
humanity and tender sensibility for unseen and distant suffer¬ 
ings is stronger and more constant. The women of the country, 
who are the actual creators, by the labor of their fingers, of the 
chief supplies and comforts needed by the soldiers, have been 
the first to understand, appreciate, and co-operate with the 
Sanitary Commission. It is due to the sagacity and zeal with 
which they have entered into the work, that the system of sup¬ 
plies, organized by the extraordinary genius of Mr. Olmsted, 
has become so broadly and nationally extended, and that, with 
Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pitts¬ 
burg, Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn, New Haven, Hart¬ 
ford, Providence, Boston, Portland, Concord, for centres, there 
should be at least fifteen thousand soldier’s Aid Societies, all 
under the control of women, combined and united in a com¬ 
mon work,—of supplying through the United States Sanitary 
Commission, the wants of the sick and wounded in the great 
Federal army. 

The skill, zeal, business qualities, and patent and persistent 


33 


devotion, exhibited by those women who manage the truly 
vast operations of the several chief centres of supply at Chicago, 
Boston, Cleveland, or Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and New York, 
have unfolded a new page in the history of the aptitudes and 
capacities of women. - To receive, acknowledge, sort, arrange, 
mark, repack, store, hold ready for shipment, procure transport¬ 
ation for, and send forward at sudden call, the many thousand 
boxes of hospital stores, which, at the order of the General 
Secretary at Washington, have been for two years and a half 
past, forwarded at various times by the “ Women’s Central” at 
New York, the Branch at Cleveland, the Branches at Cincin¬ 
nati and Philadelphia, or the Northwestern Branch at Chi¬ 
cago—has required business talents of the highest order, such 
as would have meanwhile made the fortunes of a hundred 
of these very women, had they devoted them to trade. A cor¬ 
respondence demanding infinite tact, promptness, and method, 
has been carried on with their local tributaries, by the women from 
these centres, with a ceaseless ardor to which the Commission 
owes a very large share of its success, and the Nation no small 
part of its patriotism. To collect funds (for the supply branches 
have usually raised their own funds from the immediate com¬ 
munities in which they have been situated), has often tasked 
their ingenuity to the utmost. In Chicago, for instance, the 
Branch has just held a Pair of colossal proportions, to which 
the whole Northwest was invited to send supplies, and to 
attend in mass ! On the 26th of October, when it opened, a 
procession of three miles in length, composed of wagon-loads 
of supplies, and of people in various ways interested, paraded 
through the streets of Chicago; the stores, being closed, and 
the day given up to patriotic sympathies. For fourteen 
days the Fair lasted, and every day brought reinforcements 
of supplies, and of people and purchasers. The country peo¬ 
ple, from hundreds of miles about, sent in upon the railroads 
all the various products of their farms, mills, and hands. 
Those who had nothing else, sent the poultry from their 
barn-yards ; the ox, or bull, or calf from the stall; the title- 
deed of a few acres of land ; so many bushels of grain, or 
turnips and onions. Loads of hay, even, were sent in from ten 
or a dozen miles out, and sold at once in the hay-market, 
3 


Eicketty and lumbering wagons, made of poles, loaded with 
a mixed freight—a few cabbages, a bundle of socks, a coop of 
tame ducks, a few barrels of potatoes, a pot of butter, and a 
bag of beans—with the proud and humane farmer driving the 
team, his wife behind in charge of the baby, while two or three 
little children contended with the boxes, and barrels, and bun¬ 
dles, for room to sit or lie ;—such were the evidences of devotion 
and self-sacrificing zeal the northwestern farmers gave, as, in 
their long trains of wagons, they trundled into Chicago, from 
twenty and thirty miles distance, and unloaded their contents 
at the doors of the Northwestern Fair, for the benefit of the 
United States Sanitary Commission. The mechanics and arti¬ 
sans of the towns and cities were not behind the farmers. 
Each man sent his best piano, plough, threshing-machine, or 
sewing-machine, and every form of agricultural implement, and 
every product of mechanical skill in every line of work, from 
the watchmaker’s jewelry to the furnace and forge; from 
buttons and pails to horseshoes and harness; from lace, cloth, 
cotton, and linen to iron and steel; wooden, and waxen, and 
earthenware ; butter and cheese, bacon and beef—nothing came 
amiss, and nothing failed to come ! and the ordering of all this 
was in the hands of women. They fed in the restaurant, under 
“ the Fair,” at fifty cents a meal, 1,500 mouths a day, for a 
fortnight, from food furnished, cooked, and served by the 
women of Chicago; and so orderly and convenient, so prac¬ 
tical and wise were the arrangements, that, day by day, they 
had just what they had ordered and what they counted on, 
always enough and never too much. They divided the houses 
of the town, and levied on No. 16 A street for five turkeys, on 
Monday; No. 37 B street, for 12 apple-pies, on Tuesday ; No. 
49 C street, for forty pounds of roast beef, on Wednesday; 
No. 23 D street was to furnish so much pepper on Thursday; 
No. 33 E street, so much salt on Friday. In short, every prep¬ 
aration was made in advance, at the least inconvenience pos¬ 
sible to the people, to distribute in the most equal manner the 
welcome burden of feeding the visitors at the fair, at the ex¬ 
pense of the good people of Chicago, but for the pecuniary 
benefit of the Sanitary Commission. Hundreds of lovely young 
girls, in simple uniforms, took their places as waiters behind 


35 


the vast array of tables, and everybody was as well served as 
at a first-class hotel, at a less expense to himself, and with a great 
profit to the Fair. Fifty thousand dollars, it is said, will be the 
least net return of this gigantic Fair to the treasury of the 
Branch at Chicago. It is universally conceded that to Mrs. 
Livermore and Mrs. Hoge, old and tried friends of the soldier 
and of the Sanitary Commission, and its ever active agents, is 
due the planning, management, and success of this truly Amer¬ 
ican exploit. What is the value of the money thus raised, 
important as it is, when compared with the worth of the spirit 
manifested, the loyalty exhibited, the patriotism stimulated, the 
example set, the prodigious tide of national devotion put in 
motion ! How can Rebellion hope to succeed in the face of 
such Home Demonstrations as the Northwestern Fair? They 
are bloodless battles, equal in significance and results to Vicks¬ 
burg and Gettysburg, to New Orleans and Newbern ! 

So much for the way in which Home feeling was maintained 
and propitiated, while guided and economized by the Sanitary 
Commission. Thus Scylla was avoided ! Let us now turn to 
the principles and method adopted in dealing with the question 
of Governmental Responsibility—the Charybdis on which 
every volunteer or outside ministry to the soldiers was likely 
to make shipwreck. It was a first principle with the Sanitary 
Commission that “ a spur in the head is worth two in the heel,” 
and that the Medical Department was “ the Head ” of the sick 
and wounded soldiers : the public, through the Sanitary Com¬ 
mission, or any and all other outside agencies, only “ the Heel.” 
Their main effort, as has already been seen, was to aid the 
more earnest and progressive men in obtaining control of its 
affairs, and that done, to stimulate the department, by friendly 
criticism, by zealous example, by earnest remonstrance, by con¬ 
siderate suggestion, by interposition in its favor with Congress 
and the higher powers, to do the best and the utmost, both in 
large and liberal plans, and in prompt and efficient execution 
of them, for the prevention of sickness and the humane treat¬ 
ment of what could not be prevented. This was doing good 
by wholesale. It was widening, deepening, and filling the 
normal channels through which ease and relief can alone be 
applied constantly, universally, and without disturbance to the 


36 


military system. It is proper to say that the Sanitary Commis¬ 
sion holds for its highest boast, not what it has done, but what 
it has prevented from being left undone ; not what it has itself, 
large as that may be, extended to the sick and wounded men 
of the army, but for the comparatively small dimensions to 
which it has gradually reduced the call for outside aid and re¬ 
lief, by the energetic and humane administration of the Medi¬ 
cal Department, which it has aided in procuring. 

It is not the fault of the Sanitary Commission, if exagger¬ 
ated ideas of its claims and importance, as compared with those 
of the Medical Department, prevail in many quarters. In public 
addresses in all the great cities, in published letters to Governors 
of States, and to State-Surgeon-Generals, in its regular reports 
and under all circumstances, it has magnified and celebrated 
the growing efficiency of the Medical Department, chronicled 
its vast and beneficent reforms, defended the Bureau against 
unjust charges, shown the recklessness of the rife rumors as to 
the general negligence, cupidity and impotence of the sur¬ 
geons in the service, and endeavored to acquaint the public 
with the dependence of the sick and wounded on the care, pity, 
and generous provision of the Government itself, rather than on 
outside aid and mercy. 

It is plain how exposed to misapprehension the Medical De¬ 
partment of so vast an army as ours is, how little credit it gets 
for the regular and successful performance of its duties, how 
much blame for its occasional failures to meet the exigencies 
that beset its affairs. All the while, for food, clothing, shelter, 
medical care, nursing, transportation, the sick or wounded sol¬ 
dier is dependent upon, and actually receives seven-eighths of 
all he needs from the Government itself. The other eighth he 
must owe to the pity and care of some outside beneficence. 
He, himself, is apt to receive only as his due, and, therefore, 
thoughtlessly and ungratefully, all that the Government does 
for him, and to have the liveliest sense only of what it does not 
do, with the most indignant complaints at its neglect. Of 
course, he gives a corresponding gratitude to those who come, 
in as volunteers to supply the necessary or unavoidable defects 
and omissions from which he suffers; and the Sanitary Com¬ 
mission, or some similar organization, gets for its comparatively 


37 


small labors, the praise and the gratitude really due in much 
larger measure to the Government itself and the Medical De¬ 
partment—above all, to the laborious and devoted surgeons 
themselves. It is the old fallacy ; we think more of the two¬ 
penny ounce of butter than of the ten-penny loaf of bread— 
because one merely satisfies our hunger and the other gratifies 
our palate. The Sanitary Commission, being really in earnest, 
laboring not for praise, but for practical results, saw the vast 
importance of strengthening and stimulating that system to 
which the soldier must owe seven-eighths of his chances of 
escape from sickness, or care and comfort when sick ; and that no 
skill or success in managing and magnifying its own contingent 
work, which, at the utmost, was but a fractional interest, could 
be any sort of substitute for the zeal and efficiency of the regu¬ 
lar Department. It saw and recognized the value of the loaf 
of bread, and determined not to allow the butter-question to 
blind its own or the public’s eyes! 

But, after all, it had its own work to do and to do well. It 
was plain enough, that after a very short study, the general 
utility and success of the army system and of the Medical De¬ 
partment as a portion of it, depended upon rigidity of method. 
Discipline is the soul of an army; strict accountablenesss and 
limited responsibility are essential in the administration of 
military affairs. Routine makes the skeleton and red-tape ap¬ 
plies the ligaments to the system. 

To attempt to supply an army as a family, or a village, or a 
city is supplied; or to carry civil maxims or customs into the 
camp,—is a pure impossibility. Strict rules and regulations and 
compulsory and inevitable conformity to them, are the condi¬ 
tions of the largest good to the largest number. It is certain, 
beforehand, that this necessary system will press with terrible 
severity upon a considerable class of exceptions; but to 
consider these exceptions, and bend the system to accommodate 
or include them, would be to imperil the advantage of that 
vast majority which the rule is established to serve. If the 
tape is so loose that any one papercan be easily pulled from the 
bundle, all the papers are likely to be lost, or found scattered by 
the wind. The Sanitary Commission therefore has never joined 
in the popular cry of too much red tape ; it has never asked for, 


38 


or consented to any scheme for conducting medical affairs, in a 
free and easy manner, without military subordination and care¬ 
fully limited responsibilities. Whatever evils have attended 
this system, have been less than those its removal would 
instantly evoke. Indeed, it was mainly to enable the Medical 
Department to maintain its own rules with rigorous fidelity, 
that the Commission undertook to look after only those individual 
wants, and those exceptional sufferings, which grow out of the 
necessary imperfection of all large systems, and which have 
always furnished it its only legitimate and welcome op¬ 
portunities of service. That the exceptions in an army of a 
million and more of men, at one time or another in the field, 
with an average sick list of at least fifty thousand men, should 
be numerous in themselves, however small relatively to the 
number taken care of by the Medical Department itself, is what 
the most thoughtless might anticipate. They have been numer¬ 
ous enough and constant enough to task the utmost liberality of 
the nation, and to afford the most steady and exhausting labor 
to the Sanitary Commission. At no time have the extra sup¬ 
plies furnished by the public to the Commission, or to any, and 
all outside ministries, been fully equal to the demands. Nor, 
with the experience now afforded the careful students of army 
movements and exigencies, is it at all strange that great and 
frequent failures should attend the best plans of the Medical 
Department; battles proving general, when they were expected 
to be skirmishes or reconnoissances; the wounded turning out 
twice as many as any reasonable foresight could have anticipated ; 
time and place being both suddenly changed ; transportation 
impeded or preoccupied by greater necessities, and movements 
of the enemy, instantly defeating the whole, and the most saga¬ 
cious arrangements made by Medical Directors. 

Let it be remembered, that the first office of an army is to 
fight; and that the first necessity of the Government is to look 
after the fighting men, providing them with adequate ammuni¬ 
tion, food and reinforcements ; that at the time of an impending 
battle, or during one, the chief solicitude is not, cannot and ought 
not to be about the wounded, but about those still able to fight, 
and it will be seen how perplexed, delayed and hampered the 
Medical Department must be, in getting forward its stores, in 


39 


removing the wounded, or in taking care of them promptly. 
The first interests of the army require that the Medical Depart¬ 
ment should be left in this subordinate and dependent position. 
You cannot afford it independent transportation without de¬ 
stroying its co-ordination with the other departments, and em¬ 
barrassing it nine-tenths of the time, with the care of trains, 
horses and forage, for the sake of the advantages that would ac¬ 
crue to it for the other tenth of the time, Nor can the com¬ 
manding general safely allow his hospital stores to be jeopard¬ 
ized by advancing them to the front, which doubtless would, if 
safe, be most convenient for the service of the wounded or 
the sick. Thus after the battle of Gettysburg, when Meade was 
pursuing Lee’s flying army, and another general battle was 
hourly expected near the old field of Antietam, the General 
would not, and could not allow the vast medical stores required 
in case of a battle to be brought over South Mountain, because 
Boonsboro, beyond which his own headquarters lay, and where 
the Sanitary Commission had opened its store-houses, w'as liable 
any day to be attacked and ransacked by the enemy’s cavalry. 
This was prudent and humane ; and yet in case of a great 
battle it must have caused enormous suffering. Now, for this 
very reason that it was not safe for the.Government stores, the 
Sanitary Commission determined to run the risk of its own 
stores, that if a battle did occur, it might alleviate the wants of the 
battle-field, till the regular medical stores could be brought up. 
Thus the Medical Department followed its legitimate and boun- 
den course of duty in obedience to judicious orders from head¬ 
quarters. The Sanitary Commission, with its independent 
transportation, and independent movements in general, followed 
also its legitimate and necessary duty—and stood ready to pre¬ 
vent the evils which must otherwise flow from the best and 
wisest course left open to the Medical Department. 

But it was not in battle-fields and exigencies chiefly that the 
Commission found most seriously tested its principle of doing 
nothing for the sick and wounded soldiers which it could induce 
or compel the Government to do. Begimental, Field, and 
General Hospitals have been the steady sphere of its labors. It 
has spent its chief time, supplies, and energies in satisfying the 
wants existing there. For the first year of the war, there was 


40 


not commercial industry enough in the country to supply the 
actual wants of the army. Clothing could not be manufac¬ 
tured fast enough to meet the rapidly recruited ranks. Cloths 
were imported by the Government as a protection against the 
enormous rates which holders of suitable stuffs were selfishly 
exacting. Besides, the ideas of the Government Bureaus did 
not and could not expand as fast as the unprecedented wants of 
the army did. Timidity and caution tied up even the boldest 
hands. The suffering which existed in the rank and file from 
want of blankets, stockings, over-coats, and tents, was great. 
The regimental hospitals, under new and inexperienced sur¬ 
geons, without acquaintance with Bureau routine, were often 
desperately deficient, both in what they might have had, if at 
the proper time they had known how to ask for it, and of what 
no skill in asking at that time could secure. The general hos¬ 
pitals were just beginning to be established. Inconvenient and 
wholly unsuitable buildings were the only ones within reach, 
and the Government was not then aroused to the necessity of 
creating proper ones. The hospital fund, the usual adequate 
resource of the surgeon for all extra comforts and delicacies, 
now extensively, nay, universally in operation, could not at 
once be inaugurated, even by experts, and was utterly beyond 
the management of novices. It afforded no dependence for 
many months, and was of little use for the first year of the 
war. The Sanitary Commission took its place, and supplied a 
large part of all which its best and most efficient management 
could have yielded. It came in, everywhere, to do just what 
Government and the Medical Department, in the sudden ex¬ 
pansion, by successive monstrous motions, from 75 to 300, to 
500, to 800 thousand men, could not so adjust its means to its 
ends, and its supplies to the vast wants of the hour, as effect¬ 
ively and humanely to accomplish. But it did its work on 
system, according to analogous rules, and with a strict under¬ 
standing with the Department and Bureaus, so as to discourage 
the imperfect preparations, or inadequate arrangements of the 
Medical Bureau or Quartermaster-General; to make it hard 
and difficult, and disagreeable for them ; to uphold their own 
efforts for reform and enlargement; and to emphasize in such 
a way their dependence, as to shame them into desperate efforts 


41 


to break loose from it. No supplies could be furnished the 
men, except on requisition of the Surgeon himself, who thereby 
acknowledged his dependence on outside help for what it was 
his pride and his duty to obtain from the Department he repre¬ 
sented. No distribution by outside parties was allowed. The 
discipline of the hospitals, with the authority of the officers, 
medical and otherwise, was to be carefully upheld. No help 
that could be extended to individual cases of suffering would 
atone for the injustice done the general principle itself. That 
which has often been made an objection to the Sanitary Com¬ 
mission, that it did not fill the hospitals with resident relief 
agents, or nurses, who should themselves be the judges of the 
wants of the sick, and the direct vehicles of relief, in the form 
of clothing, delicacies, or medicines, was one of its cardinal 
virtues. Such intrusion into military hospitals was not only 
fatal to discipline, to due responsibility, to the quietude of the 
place, and the control of the diet and treatment of the sick, but 
it was fatal to the peace, the self-respect, and the esprit de corps 
of the Medical Department. Wherever it was allowed, it did 
little but harm, and if the Sanitary Commission had encouraged 
or countenanced it, they would soon have lost all the influence 
they had with the Department and the surgeons. Instead of 
this, they appointed experts to visit the hospitals, observe their 
wants, see the officers, nurses, and men, and, after con¬ 
ference with the surgeon in charge, to obtain from him a 
requisition on their supplies for what he felt the hospital 
to need—to be applied under his own orders, and by his 
own agents to his own patients. Skilled and judicious women, 
offering their services as nurse3, and accepted through the 
free and hearty consent of the Surgeons in charge, have ren¬ 
dered invaluable services to the sick ever since the hospitals 
were opened. But they have owed their usefulness to their 
strict obedience and conformity to army regulations, and only 
those docile and wise enough to respect the superior knowledge 
and authority of the Surgeons, have been for any considerable 
time able to keep their places, or to make themselves greatly 
serviceable. Perhaps two hundred such women exist in the 
whole army, to whose noble, devoted and gentle hearts, skillful 
hands and administrative faculties, are due a considerable part 


42 




of the success which has attended the operation of our military 
nurses. The main dependence is, at all times, on detailed or 
enlisted male nurses, who, to the number of perhaps 2,000, are 
always on duty, and to the unwearied labors of our Surgeons— 
who, as a class, are not only utterly incapable of the negligence, 
drunkenness, fraud and greediness, with which they have been 
publicly charged, but have really rendered illustrious services, 
not only by gallant self exposure on the field, but in watching 
and waiting on their charges with a vigilance which has cost 
many of them their lives. The cruel asperions with which 
bigots and fanatics have often visited their conduct on battle¬ 
fields, where three or four consecutive nights passed in hard 
service with only two or three hours sleep, has made their 
ability to do any work or to keep themselves alive, dependent 
on the use of stimulants—charging them with general drunken¬ 
ness, as at Chancellorsville—is a scandal and slander which the 
closest and longest opportunities of observation, enables us 
utterly to refute. The ordinary percentage of incompetency, 
lack of principle and inhumanity, doubtless exists among the 
army Surgeons—but on the whole we judge them to be superior 
to any other equally large class of officers in the field, while 
their duties are probably more constant, and at times more ex¬ 
hausting, than those of any other class. 

It is by strict fidelity to these general principles that the 
Sanitary Commission has endeavored to avoid the peril which 
threatened the efficiency of the Government service, by out¬ 
side interposition ; and its success as an organization is due to 
the genuineness of the faith in which it has carried out its 
pledges to the Government, to be a strictly subordinate and 
ancillary body ; loyal to the Medical Department—its fearless 
critic, but never its rival, or supplanter—its watchful spur, but 
never its sly traducer, or its disguised enemy. 

It remains now to unfold the actual organization and working 
of the^Commission.^ But this we must defer to another paper. 





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